16 Fast Food Items That Won't Ruin Your Keto Diet

Eating fast food while dieting is hard, but finding keto-friendly foods can be especially challenging. The high-fat, low-carb diet calls for approximately 70 percent of your daily calories to come from fat, 20 percent from protein and only about 10 percent from carbs. Although the drive-thru is full of fat-laden menu items, these foods are typically loaded with carbs–a keto no-no. But sometimes, fast food is handy, like when you need to grab some fuel in between work meetings.

So what's a busy keto dieter to do?

Many fast food options are customizable and can be adapted to fit a keto lifestyle, says Jenny Kramer, R.D., who specializes in the ketogenic diet at Indiana University. Since staying in ketosis, or burning fat for energy, requires a lot of diligence and adherence to maintaining the proper fat, protein and carbs ratio, Kramer recommends carrying your own source of fat.

"Most of the time it’s not going to be easy to find olive oil to pour right on your salad," she says. In addition, it's best to be mindful about protein portion sizes too. "You want to be careful that you’re not overdoing it on your meat serving," she says. So maybe don't go for that triple cheeseburger.

And if you're consuming more protein at lunch, you may want to increase fat and reduce protein at dinner to stay within the daily recommendations. Although finding keto-friendly fast food requires some work, here are options from 10 popular chains that you can easily adapt to fit your diet.

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